The GOP will not abide the effort to hold the January 6th rioters accountable.
That’s the message emerging from Salt Lake City, where the Republican National Committee is poised to censure Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, the two GOP members participating in the House’s investigation of the January 6th Capitol attack.
On Thursday, a RNC subgroup unanimously voted to pass the censure. The organization’s full body will consider the matter on Friday at their annual winter meeting.
The censure resolution accuses Kinzinger and Cheney of “participating in a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse” according to The Associated Press. By any objective measure, “legitimate political discourse” is a stunning euphemism for a violent riot that left 140 police officers injured and caused millions of dollars worth of property damage.
Of course, Kinzinger and Cheney are also considered pariahs within their party for their vociferous criticism of Donald Trump, who has spent his post-presidency spreading lies about election fraud and nursing political resentments.
“The leaders of the Republican Party have made themselves willing hostages to a man who admits he tried to overturn a presidential election and suggests he would pardon Jan. 6 defendants, some of whom have been charged with seditious conspiracy,” Cheney tweeted Thursday.
She added: “I’m a constitutional conservative and I do not recognize those in my party who have abandoned the Constitution to embrace Donald Trump. History will be their judge. I will never stop fighting for our constitutional republic. No matter what.”
Kinzinger expressed a similar sentiment in a statement, saying that the GOP can’t “see clear-eyed” because of “conspiracies and toxic tribalism.”
“Rather than focus their efforts on how to help the American people, my fellow Republicans have chosen to censure two lifelong members of their party for simply upholding their oaths of office,” he wrote.
Harmeet Dhillon, a member of the RNC who sponsored the censure resolution, insisted “this is not about them being anti-Trump.”
“There are plenty of other people in the party who are anti-Trump whose names don’t appear in the resolution. These two took specific action to defy party leadership,” Dhillon said, adding “We want to send a message that we’re disapproving of their conduct.”
The resolution vows that the RNC will “immediately cease any and all support” to Kinzinger and Cheney. The former is not seeking re-election, the latter is subject to an intense GOP primary.
Many members of the RNC wanted to impose even more punishment on Kinzinger and Cheney. POLITICO reports:
The resolution would amount to a weaker admonishment of Cheney and Kinzinger than initially proposed. Led by David Bossie, a longtime Trump ally and RNC member from Maryland, ardent Cheney and Kinzinger critics had lobbied for a resolution calling for their ouster from the House conference. That proposal had drawn resistance from some RNC members, who said they feared the language was unnecessarily inflammatory.
Still, for the Republican National Committee to censure two of its own members is significant — a pointed escalation in the GOP’s bid to purge itself of Republicans perceived as disloyal to Trump. Republicans meeting here fumed over Cheney and Kinzinger’s participation on the Jan. 6 committee, which Trump earlier Thursday called a “corrupt Unselect Committee of political hacks and highly partisan sleazebags.” And even among RNC members who were hesitant to engage in intraparty warring, several said they would likely support the censure resolution on Friday.
But Sen. Mitt Romney blasted the RNC’s censure on Friday morning, writing “Shame falls on a party that would censure persons of conscience, who seek truth in the face of vitriol. Honor attaches to Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger for seeking truth even when doing so comes at great personal cost.”
RNC member Bill Palatucci, of New Jersey, also criticized the censure, saying “We should be shooting at Democrats, not Republicans.”